Which for the last couple of days has been surrounded by ice and snow, just like the more famous Fortress owned by that guy from Krypton. Fortunately, the temperature has risen above freezing and is expected to stay that way for the next week. As a result of the inclement weather, and working in a facility at the top of a big hill, I worked from home today.

Which was...marginally successful. I was able to log in to my desk remotely, but certain pieces of software were out of reach. I spent (along with my boss) a good part of the day trying to fix that situation, to no avail. I also decided that I need to buy a new hard drive for my home PC. It's a repurposed computer from my previous job (hey, they were giving them away and I got one), which was convenient when my home PC died of heat exhaustion a good while back.

It's got a plenty fast CPU and adequate memory and good (if not great) graphics. But it's only got a 75 GB hard drive.* Which was plenty for what they used it for in the workplace, handling a lot of data, but not storing it. Not nearly enough for my needs, though, even with most of my files on two external hard drives. Just the operating system and the software that HAS to live on the C: drive to function have filled it up. So...hard drive shopping tomorrow, probably. Then days of fun installing the OS on the new drive (not the current OS that came with the PC, the Windows 7 install disk from my previous computer) and tweaking everything the way I want it.

So, I hear you ask, how do I like living alone? Well, I am still grieving the end of my marriage at times. That was a long relationship, and I'd hoped it would be for life. But it wasn't, and I'm building a new life one day at a time. Working out my routines. Trying out new ones. And I'm enjoying it. In some ways I miss having other people around to talk to, and in other ways not at all. I can do what I want when I want how I want. I'm learning what works and what doesn't.

For instance, I have a dishwasher in my kitchen. In over three weeks, I haven't used it yet. I just wash up as I go, or at most, leave the dishes until I'm done with a meal, then clean up. And if I want to pause a television show for half an hour while I do, nobody else is inconvenienced.

I still haven't reassembled my computer desk yet. The computer is sprawled across a long trestle table I've owned for a long, long time in the dining/living room. But spending eight hours at it today for telecommuting has put a kink in my shoulders and neck, which means I need to get to that. The current arrangement is okay for brief 20-30 minutes bouts of netsurfing, but not for lengthy use.

The apartment is still quite spartan, and while I do plan to get a little more furniture eventually, I find that I like it that way. I like having lots of empty space. It's tidy, easy to clean; not a lot of furniture to dust or to vacuum around. It just feels spacious...because it is.

My upstairs neighbors are a little noisy. Not unreasonably so, but definitely audible. Especially the rhythmic squeaking of springs I hear periodically from the living/dining room area. At first it sounded like bedsprings--but it was in the living room, which seemed unlikely. Now I've noticed that moves around, and I'm thinking maybe it's...a child's hobby horse (one suspended from springs so the kid can rock on it)? Something that can be--and is--moved around quite a bit. Well, it's a mystery.

All in all, things are going well.

*I remember the day I got access to a computer with TWENTY MEGABYTES of storage on the hard drive, and wondered how on earth I would EVER use that much capacity. It was inconceivable that I could fill a cavernous space like that. Then I shook my head, glanced out the window, and yelled at the dinosaurs to get off my lawn.